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The second non-gp fight of SENGOKU VII along with the final participant of the Featherweight GP were announced today. The rumored fight between James Thompson and Big Jim York will take place and Kim Jong Man will take the final spot of the Featherweight GP.

Kim Jong Man has a few very good results in his record and should have gotten the nod in his last fight against DJ.taiki. However, he has been inconsistent thus far in his career.

SENGOKU Featherweight GP participant Tetsuya Yamada graduated from high school today in Yokosuka in the Kanagawa Prefecture. From now on he will work some nursing welfare job and aim at becoming an MMA champion.

L.C. Davis has revealed to MMAWeekly.com that he will face Michihiro Omigawa at the first round of SENGOKU’s Featherweight GP on March 20th. A Matt Jaggers vs. Marlon Sandro fight might also happen according to a reader of this blog.

Now that fights are starting to be announced by fighters themselves, it shouldn’t be long until WVR announce the complete card.

The final participant will probably be Kazuyuki Miyata or a Korean. I expect the Korean at this point.

There are once again reports that Athens 2004 silver medalist in Judo, Hiroshi Izumi, will make the transition to MMA. Izumi was rumored to participate at the January 4th SENGOKU event but nothing came off it. Now, the rumor has resurfaced and it is being reported that he has already started training MMA and that it is expected that he will announce his transition to MMA at the All-Japan Judo Championships (in April I think), which in that case would be his last Judo tournament.

Today’s Cage Force event ended not long ago and it seems like there were some close fights. Katsuhiko Nagata drew with Team Akiyama gym member Yasunori Kanehara and the main event between Cage Force champion Mizuto Hirota and Lightweight King Of Pancrase Katsuya Inoue also ended in a draw.

The main event was a very important fight in the SENGOKU Lightweight title picture (they even wrote about it on SENGOKU’s official website and had a short spot with Katsuya Inoue, mentioning his three wins over champion Kitaoka, at a SENGOKUG! episode), so it will be interesting to see what happens now.

Lightweight prospect Yoshihiro Koyama also fought at the Cage Force event today where he defeated another good fighter in Tomonari Kanomata by unanimous decision. Koyama together with Katsunori Kikuno and Koichiro Matsumoto, who won their fights against Jung Bukyung and Jutaro Nakao at DEEP 40 last week, is part of the next batch of possible Japanese Lightweight greats.

In another interesting fight at DEEP 40 last week, Seichi Ikemoto defeated Hidetaka Monma to receive a spot in the DREAM Welterweight GP starting at DREAM.8 in April.

It has been officially announced on UFC’s website that Japan & Korea superstar Yoshihiro Akiyama has signed with the UFC. No date has been set yet for his debut but with this signing we can probably expect the UFC to hold events in Korea or Japan, maybe sooner than we thought.

Promising SENGOKU training player Maximo Blanco will return to the Pancrase ring on April 5th with his new ring name, The True Knight (not sure how to translate, could maybe be translated as the knight of truth also). He will face veteran Koji Oishi in probably his toughest fight to date.

King Mo talks another Pancrase fighter, namely Light Heavyweight King Of Pancrase Ryo Kawamura, in a new interview with PunchDrunkGamer.

In other SENGOKU news, Jorge Santiago reveals to Tatame that he might return to SENGOKU in May. Hopefully he will defend his title if he participates.

SENGOKU veteran Nick Thompson defeated Paul Daley on the 20th at MFC 20. This is a big win for him and he would surely be one of the favorites in a possible SENGOKU Welterweight GP. You can watch the fight here.